Staff Writer

RIYADH, 13 June 2003 — The ousted regime of Saddam Hussein executed five Saudi prisoners of war captured by Iraqi troops during its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, a senior Saudi official said in remarks published by Okaz newspaper yesterday.

The information was supplied by the Iraqi side during a recent meeting of the joint international committee in charge of discovering the fate of Kuwaiti and other POWs taken by Iraq, the official added.

“Preliminary information confirms that five Saudis were executed,” Prince Turki ibn Mohammad ibn Saud, assistant undersecretary for political affairs at the Foreign Ministry, told Okaz.

He said that after Saddam’s fall, the Iraqi side supplied the names of eight more Saudi POWs to be added to 23 names already on an old list.